Toilet Tuna

I took this picture at UB last week.  There’s something disturbing about the idea of someone eating a can of tuna in a bathroom stall.

On Pissing and Parades

Alan does a great job of missing the point about my take on Extreme Home Makeover.  Let’s go:

Was the family that received the benefits of a visit from Extreme Home Makeover undeserving?  No.  No one can argue that.  What they argue instead is that there are loads of other families that are also deserving.

Sorry, but that’s not what I or others on the left argue.  We don’t argue that other people are deserving, but that the whole idea of “deserving and undeserving” is problematic, and that it’s at the heart of the right wing understanding of poverty.  I’d argue that poverty is a structural phenomenon, and has relatively little to do with the personal choices and lifestyle issues that are used to sort people into categories like “deserving” and “undeserving.”  And no matter how great EHM is for individual families or communities, its overall impact is to strengthen a way of thinking about poverty that hurts poor people.

Calling it a “poverty pageant” is uncalled-for, and frankly not at all different from what the right-wing has to say about it.  What an interesting coalition of glib know-it-allness they’ve founded.

EHM is based on putting the misfortune of poor people on public display, and then washing it away in a cathartic display of (temporary) public generosity.  “Poverty pageant” seems pretty apt.  And I’m not aware of any right wing critique of EHM that discusses the need to address structural poverty and the way that public spectacles of generosity can cover up that need.  That’s simply not a right wing way of looking at things, so the claim that there’s some kind of left/right “coalition” at work here is a pile of shit.

And by selecting this family and showing what a motivated populace, a quick-reacting city government, a generous builder, and helpful non-profits can accomplish, we are reminded of the amazing things that people can accomplish when they have not only a purpose, but support from government and industry.

Sure, this is all great.  But I don’t think it’s out of bounds to point out that a decent life shouldn’t be dependent on the generosity of the wealthy or the helpfulness of volunteers.  Or to question whether EHM’s celebration of wealthy generosity and helpful volunteerism ends up obscuring the structural reasons that poverty exists in the first place.  An emphasis on private enterprise, charity and volunteerism is the hallmark of the right wing response to poverty.

Both groups focus on the limitations of what EHM did, and totally ignore or pay lip-service to the possibilities.

Again, I’m not that concerned that EHM “only” helped one family or one neighborhood.  Those limitations aren’t the problem.  The problem is that EHM is based on (and reproduces) right wing arguments about poverty that end up hurting the poor.  As for “lip service,” all I can say is that my appreciation of the positive impact of EHM is sincere, and was stated pretty clearly in my original piece: “while renovating a house doesn’t address the structural problems of poverty and urban abandonment, it’s still great to see a house get renovated.  I get that.  And it’s also important to note that some of my heroes did a great job of leveraging this one-off event into a much larger impact for the neighborhood.  That’s beautiful.”

I call what happened on Mass Ave. “great” and “beautiful” while lauding “my heroes” in PUSH for their involvement.  That’s hardly the glib, one-sided take Alan claims to see.  In fact, Alan’s take — which seems to argue that a deeper consideration of what’s happened over the last few weeks amounts to “pissing on the parade” — is the glib one.

Ye Olde Wet Dream

Christine Leigh Heyrman, in Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt, on the temptations faced by itinerant preachers in the early republic:

The failure to repress sexual impulses fills their diaries, and hostesses doubtless came across telltale evidence when laundering their bed linen.  Awakening one morning in 1783, Thomas Haskins “found I had had a  severe and very bold assault by my fleshly enemy.”

On Extreme Home Makeover

Good for them . . .

I’ve been wanting to write something about Extreme Home Makeover.  I’ll begin by recognizing that while renovating a house doesn’t address the structural problems of poverty and urban abandonment, it’s still great to see a house get renovated.  I get that.  And it’s also important to note that some of my heroes did a great job of leveraging this one-off event into a much larger impact for the neighborhood.  That’s beautiful.

But wasn’t this all a little distasteful?  My friend Jon Markle sums up the icky politics behind the poverty pageant in this Facebook note.  Jon is smarter — and taller — than you, so you should take the time to consider his objections, which are briefly excerpted below:

1. *Fuck the undeserving.* The trope of the “deserving family,” to use the show’s own language—racially diverse, generally heteronormative with children and trapped in adverse circumstances not of their own making—necessarily posits the realm of the undeserving family. Proceeding on (my very unscientific and overlapping) spectrum of relative social normativity, those disqualified from EHM’s moral lottery system progressively become mirrors of those excluded in the post-Reagan city . . .

2. *The public-private partnership is the perfected form of urban governance and development.* EHM presents the incontrovertible image of a successful urban transformation in Buffalo—underwritten by Disney dollars in conjunction with nonprofits that utilize hybrid streams of public-private dollars and, finally, taxpayer-funded Americorps labor. This Third Way of kinder, gentler anti-statism assumes the privatization of benefits and the socialization of risks . . .

3. *What do you want us to do? We did something!* The material benefits to the neighborhood and to its citizens are also incontrovertible—yard cleanups, new roofs, paint jobs, park construction, etc. These effects may provide “hope” but they do nothing to address the tired litany of urban structural poverty issues. And thus we come full circle to the question of who will bear the costs of social reproduction. EHM, the Buffalo nonprofit community, gaggles of volunteers, and Americorps all doing their part for a week (or a month or ten years) do not urban justice make.

The show serves as an orgy of public generosity and concern, a display that

. . . Even better for him.

lets people off the hook for the destructive system that they either support or fail to challenge, and millionaires and corporations end up profiting from it all.  And (almost) nothing changes.

But I’m actually less interested in the politics of the situation than in people’s desperate need to feel like they’re a part of something.  The stunning volunteer response is evidence of that need, I think.  But there are other examples, as well.  My wife serves on the student government at the UB law school, and someone there suggested that they should use the money they usually spend on food for their meeting to buy chicken wings for people volunteering at the EHM house.  The suggestion got plenty of support despite the fact that the show was providing food, that it’s hardly the responsibility of debt-ridden students to subsidize the efforts of the Disney Corporation, and that a hundred wings would be meaningless to a crowd that size.  The more clear-headed students asked a telling question: if we’re going to give food away, shouldn’t we give it to people who might actually need it?

But of course, those people — whether they’re in soup kitchens or food banks or next door — don’t have a TV crew with them, and they’re not at the center of all this public emoting.

Last summer, I suggested that Americans’ obsessive interest in the Iranian protests was linked to the phenomenon of leaving flowers and cards at the site of terrible accidents and killings — a need to create some kind of attachment to dramatic and meaningful events in the absence of drama and meaning in their own lives.   I think the same thing is at work with our collective response to Extreme Home Makeover.  If many of us despair of ever solving the problems that plague our city and maybe even doubt that the poor deserve a solution, at least we can temporarily overcome those doubts and become a community under the sanctifying gaze of a television camera.

Cutting T.O.

It's not just this hat that makes him look like a dickhead . . .

With another Bills season going down the drain, it would be nice if the team made some kind of dramatic move to indicate that they know things aren’t working and they want to make a break with the past.  Firing Dick Jauron would do it, but he’d have to be paid the balance of his contract, so we know that won’t be happening.  Cutting Terrell Owens would be a good substitute.

Think about it — why do we need a luxury item like T.O. when the most basic elements of the team aren’t working?  Depending on how you want to look at it, Owens was signed either to open up the offense as a complement to Lee Evans or to help sell tickets.  Well, the tickets have been sold, and Owens has dropped more touchdown passes than hes caught.  Add in the sideline histrionics, showing up his quarterback and the fact that he won’t be a Bill next year anyway, and it’s hard to see why shouldn’t just eat the rest of his contract and send him on his way.

Of course, it looks like the Bills are making a different dramatic move and benching Trent Edwards.  This is a real mistake.  Edwards isn’t a franchise quarterback, but then only 1/3 or so of NFL franchises have one of those.  The rest try and make do with what they have, and Edwards is perfectly make-doable for a team with as many fundamental flaws as the Bills.  Edwards played 3 good quarters on Sunday, while our line play on both sides of the ball was bad from start to finish.  Edwards can serve as a perfectly good caretaker while the team rebuilds its offensive and defensive lines — you know, the core of a football team — and it’s foolish to dump him with no better option in the wings.  Ryan Fitzpatrick is manifestly awful, and I’d hate to see some hotshot quarterback drafted only to take the kind of beating that comes from playing behind Brad Butler or Demetrius Bell.

It’s time to abandon the notion that a change at the skill positions — whether signing T.O. or benching Trent Edwards — can get the Bills over the 7-9 hump, and commit to rebuilding the core of the team.a

Brian Davis: Criminal

Yup.

Jeanne Tripplehorn: A Several Nation Army

She looks fantastic for her age . . .

From a quiz I gave to my undergraduate students this week:

The Great War was fought between the Central Powers and the Allies, also known as the:

a) Triple Play

b) Triple Entente

c) Triple Double

d) Jeanne Tripplehorn

I was hoping against hope that someone would do the right thing and choose “d,” and someone did.  They never let me down!

Chris Collins: Rich Asshole

The kind people/have a wonderful dream/Chris Collins . . ./on the guillotine

From a tipster:

Erie County Executive Chris Collins has eliminated funds in his budget that will force the closure of Erie County’s last two public health clinics effective January 1, 2010.

These public health clinics, Matt Gajewski Human Services Center (1500 Broadway ) and Jesse Nash Family Health Center (608 William St.) are slated to close unless Mr. Collins and the County Legislature hears your opposition loud and clear.

These clinics have served men, women, and children, the under-insured, and the needy for over thirty years. They provide pediatrics, family planning, adult medicine, dental, obstetric, and podiatric care for residents throughout the county. They see 22,000 visits per year and are important to our community’s health and the prevention of disease.

Without these clinics our safety net as well as neighborhood access to healthcare will be eliminated. These clinics serve as a front line defense against the rapid spread of diseases such as Swine Flu.

Please call the County Executive at 858-8500 and the Erie County Legislature at 858-7500 to express your opposition today.

A rally to protest these closing will be held on Thursday Nov. 12th in front of County Hall, 92 Franklin St. at 4pm.

*PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!*

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=176087797740

WIVB coverage of the last rally:

http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/local/Desperate_call_to_save_health_clinics_20091027

In tough times, we all have to tighten our belts.  And by “all,” I mean poor people who use health clinics and not affluent people who use county golf courses.

Tim Howard

The only Tim Howard I support . . .

This reaction to the election is a few days late, but I’ve been swamped at school.  It’s very important that I spend my time reading what some French guy wrote about what some other French guy wrote about some other French guy.  This is my life . . .

But how the hell did Tim Howard get reelected?  Now, it’s not necessarily unusual for someone to get reelected despite a widespread belief that he’s incompetent — whether we’re talking about about George Bush or Brian Davis, it happens.  But in those cases, it happens (at least in part) because these are policymaking positions, and voters are often willing to overlook questions of competence if their views are generally in line with those of the candidate.  Better to have a bad Democrat than a good Republican, or vice versa.

But the County Sheriff is a different sort of position, isn’t it?  It seems like a basically technocratic position.  There isn’t going to be some serious ideological difference between the candidates — one isn’t going to favor abolishing prisons or whatever.  It’s supposed to be a contest over who would do a better job running things, and given Howard’s, uhh . . . spotty record, well . . .

So I guess I’m wondering just what it would have taken for Howard to have lost the support of the majority of voters.  Another Bucky Phillips?  3 more? 5?  How many more inmate suicides?  Or is this just an example of party-line tribalism?

Scorpio Ball

Hank Scorpio will buy you the Denver Broncos if you attend his ball . . .

I’ve organized something like 100 events in my checkered career as an activist, but my favorite was the Scorpio Ball.  It was held in November 2004 to celebrate “the most mysterious of all the signs” and it featured cupcakes, a burlesque show, and the realization that we had 4 more years of Bush to look forward to . . . so something for everyone.

Five years later, I’m happy to announce that the good people at CEJ are bringing it back.  The revived Scorpio Ball is this Saturday — three bands, a DJ, drinks, food, Tom Golisano . . . who knows what sort of hijinks will ensure?  And it’s all to help support the work of CEJ.

What: Scorpio Ball

When: Saturday, 11/7 10:30PM-3AM

Where: 700 Main Street

Cost: $8 ($6 with student ID)

For more info, see the Facebook event page.